Can warforged turn into lycanthropes?
I am currently operating under the assumption that as constructs warforged can't contract diseases, and dont need to eat or sleep etc. But lycanthropy is more of a curse than a disease. Now warforged stats aren't available yet for 5e, but I wanted some opinions on the matter, especially on how it might look and feel like.
Normally I would describe a turning werewolf as have uncontrolled hunger for meat but how would that would that apply? Could the curse give a warforged the illusion of hunger? Would the warforged be unaffected physically but have stronger violent tendencies or loss of control?
Not a super serious question, but I thought it was an interesting one.
It's been shown that warforged, robots, etc. can contract lycanthropy. What happens is they turn into a car. See The Honking.
If going the 3.5 route of making their mechanics match to the idea of being a construct, then maybe make them immune to disease (though 5e golems aren't even granted a blanket immunity to disease).
If going the route of making warforged a fair choice among the other player character choices, then they are humanoids that happen to have the flavor description of having been artificially created, and you may as well let them be affected by disease because they have significant biological portions of their bodies - and could have an interesting feature added in place of disease immunity, while having intersting stuff and still being immune to disease might make them seem too potent.
Personally, I lean heavily on warforged being constructed beings with much of (though not all) the fragility of normal flesh & bone races so that I don't end up with what I pretty much always had when running Eberron with D&D 3.5 - a party of nothing but warforged, over and over again, and players saying "I would play an other race... but [warforged racial feature] is too good to pass up."
I think it depends on how you view the lycanthropy: if it is a disease that just happens to turn someone into a snarling monster, then I would say warforged are immune. If it is a demonic force that uses a disease as a means of transmission, then I think it would affect them (particularly if warforged have been around for a couple of decades in your game world, that would give the forces of evil a chance to evolve the disease to affect living constructs, like magically adding a computer virus attachment to the biological virus).
Also when they change form, it makes that Transformers sound.
it depends on how cartoony you want your campaign to be. Lycanthropy using the DnD term is not just a desiese it is a curse. In previous editions some races would just flat out die from lycanthropy not change. it is one of those areas that you would want to nail down for your custom campaign.
iserith wrote:
The living constructs like warforged or shardminds are inmune most of templates diseases. Warforged are perfect to kill ghouls.
Warforged aren´t flesh but wood and metal. Without blood there aren´t most of disesases suffered by humanity.
Maybe they could be suffer a curse and they would be crazy for full moon, but not become werebeasts. Forget the idea of furry warforgeds.
While this may differ from the final result, here is the Living Construct trait from the Playtest Warforged (emphasis mine).
5e Final Playtest wrote:
Thus is born the legend of Unit NOS-482...
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
1eejit wrote:
1eejit wrote:
In 3.x? No.
In 4E? Yup!
In 5th? We'll see...
(no Warforged stablock for monsters OR PCs)
Joe_the_Rat wrote:
On balance, 5e seems like it more of a racial resistance than racial immunity kind of edition, at least for playable races.
If you think of it as a curse instead of a disease, it could still work. The warforged could suffer from the mental effects of the curse but not the physical ones. He wouldn't shapeshift, but every month under the full moon he would change to chaotic evil and start tearing people apart with his hands and teeth, which would be pretty effective since he's already made of metal. Maybe you would waive the normal unarmed combat rules and give him an Amimated Armor's Slam attack.
ArkPanda wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
This could end up looking really cool.
Leaves and moss quickly grow over the wooden parts of the warforged's body, replicating fur, as its head warps into a bestial shape. Eye-glow turns a menacing red or baleful yellow.
I'd say, if lycanthropy plays a role in your campaign then it should probably effect most players.
Then again, you could always say that the warforged in your world were created specifically for dealing with lycanthropes and their ilk.
Varden_Khol wrote:
mellored wrote:
I actually have a Warforged Wererat made for a possible 4e game.
He's literally Rattrap from Beast Wars, complete with transforming sound effects.
iserith wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Warforged are mostly plant based with stone/metal bones/plates, but still primarily plant based, so I see no reason that they couldn't be cursed with lycanthropy. It could be a pretty cool character concept.
Wear Treants
Were Shardminds
(that one got a flat out, "Wait, what? That's legal? No...it's not working that way this campaign" from our DM in 4E. Albeit the shardmind PC was kidnapped by lycans, so it's not like it was part of his concept or anything)
And of course...
What happens when a werewolf is bitten by a wererat who was bitten by a werebear?
EnglishLanguage wrote:
Is it really likely to come up?
If I recall correctly, lycanthropes are far rarer in Eberron than other settings due to the purges by the Silver Flame church.
Mechagamera wrote:
This reminds me of a screencap I saw, where a Wizard dropped hints(read: was extremely unsubtle) about wanting to be a Werewolf. So at one point the DM had them fight Halfling Werewolves. The Wizard "accidently" got afflicted by it. Cue the morning where the monsters all turned into normal wolves and left, and the horror as the Wizard realized they weren't Halfling Werewolves, they were Wolf Werehalflings, and he was one too.
I've had elven immunity to Sleep come up more than anyone being affected by disease, so i wouldn't be opposed to warforged getting that immunity. In 3.5, i definitiely had immunity to Sleep and Paralysis come up more than effects from disease, though warforged immunity to poison was a big deal.
On a tangent, I did some googling and found an old article Keith Baker wrote about warforged in 4E not being immune to disease, poison, etc. and how he visualized them.
http://gloomforge.livejournal.com/10343.html
ArkPanda wrote:
Timborama wrote: